Black Leaders Showing Signs of Frustration With Mayor de Blasio

Mayor Bill de Blasio and his wife, Chirlane McCray, in 2013.Credit
Yana Paskova for The New York Times

Dozens of black ministers, justice reform advocates and civil rights activists and four black members of Congress gathered last Monday at Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem to discuss a delicate matter: What to do about Mayor Bill de Blasio.

Over the course of the morning meeting, attendees voiced a series of concerns: Mr. de Blasio, some complained, seems to have lost his appetite for criminal justice reform. The mayor, they said, has been too slow to take action against the police officer whose use of a chokehold on Eric Garner, an unarmed black man on Staten Island, led to Mr. Garner’s death. Other participants grumbled that Mr. de Blasio and his staff have simply not done enough to communicate with black community leaders on issues like affordable housing.

The unusual congregation of community influencers, convened by the Rev. Calvin O. Butts III, was part gripe session, part strategic huddle, revealing the first hints of frustration with a mayor who won 96 percent of the black vote when he was elected in 2013.

Black voters have been an essential base of support for the mayor, remaining largely enthusiastic about him even as his support has wilted with other groups in the city. The bonds were forged in Mr. de Blasio’s early criticism of stop-and-frisk policing, and reinforced by politically resonant images of his biracial family broadcast during the 2013 campaign.

Yet the perception that Mr. de Blasio, a Democrat, has eased up on his commitment to police reform has plainly begun to rankle some: At a weekend gathering this month at the Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network, Representative Hakeem Jeffries, a Brooklyn Democrat, publicly lamented that “broken windows policing,” the aggressive enforcement of minor violations, was still policy across the city.

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The Rev. Calvin O. Butts III hosted a meeting of black leaders.Credit
Marcus Yam for The New York Times

Mr. Jeffries, who also attended the gathering at Abyssinian, said in an interview that there was “growing disenchantment with the administration in the black community.”

“The disenchantment relates to policing issues, the mayor’s support of broken windows, his lack of support for banning chokeholds and his willingness to support making resisting arrest a felony,” Mr. Jeffries said, adding: “We’re very early in the mayor’s first term, and there’s a lot of room for progress.”

Other leaders, including a number who remain strongly supportive of Mr. de Blasio, said the mayor and his administration would benefit from regular contact with a larger number of black community leaders. Representative Yvette D. Clarke, an early backer of Mr. de Blasio’s mayoral campaign, said she would urge the mayor to create a broad task force, including civil rights advocates and clergy members, to weigh in on criminal justice.

“I certainly have been just sort of looking for that opening where he does bring that brain trust together, to have that conversation, and I expect that he will,” said Ms. Clarke, a Brooklyn Democrat who described complaints from community leaders as a “very important tactic” in spurring mayoral action.

Mr. de Blasio’s advisers strongly dispute that he has hit a rough patch with the city’s black political establishment, or with the black electorate. Indeed, a recent Quinnipiac University poll shows that the mayor remains on solid footing with African-Americans: 68 percent of black voters approved of Mr. de Blasio’s job performance, compared with 44 percent of voters over all. (A majority of white voters said they disapproved of the mayor.)

Yet Mr. de Blasio’s support in the black community has dropped 10 percentage points since January, when nearly four in five black voters approved of the mayor. Most black voters — 56 percent — said they approved of Mr. de Blasio’s handling of the Police Department, well short of an overpowering majority.

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Representative Hakeem Jeffries has criticized the mayor’s support of certain policing tactics.Credit
Stephen Crowley/The New York Times

If Mr. de Blasio has consistently won favor from black voters, he has not always had a simple relationship with the city’s black political leadership. Many of Mr. de Blasio’s current critics, including Mr. Butts and Mr. Jeffries, supported another candidate for mayor, William C. Thompson Jr., the former city comptroller and the lone African-American candidate in the race. (Four years earlier, Mr. Butts backed the re-election of Michael R. Bloomberg, Mr. de Blasio’s frequent political foil and a proponent of aggressive policing.)

At times, Mr. de Blasio has chosen not to genuflect to longtime local political gatekeepers, relying instead on his independent connection to black voters. Last year, for example, he declined to endorse the veteran Harlem congressman Charles B. Rangel for re-election as he faced a strenuous challenge in the Democratic primary.

Mr. de Blasio’s lack of deference may be fueling frustrations now. Mr. Rangel, who attended the meeting at Mr. Butts’s church, said he heard “a lot of questions as to his mannerisms as it relates to handling the minority community and not responding to their grievances.”

He said the mayor does not appear to have the kind of liaisons who could address many of the concerns. “No one knew or heard of anyone like that, much less hearing from the mayor,” Mr. Rangel said.

For some critics, Mr. de Blasio’s policy goals are less a source of frustration than what is perceived as his insular approach to achieving them. Mr. Butts said the fear among some clergy members was that the mayor “feels that his numbers are so good in the black and brown community that he doesn’t need the clergy, the ministers.”

The Rev. David K. Brawley, lead pastor of the St. Paul Community Baptist Church in Brooklyn, said that pastors who have long been involved in the fight for affordable housing, for instance, have felt left out of the conversation this year. “The mayor has never met with us about his affordable housing plan. Not once,” Mr. Brawley said in an email. “We appreciate that the mayor had not built a single unit of housing before coming into office. We’re here to help.”

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Bertha Lewis, a de Blasio ally, has also raised concerns.Credit
Win McNamee/Getty Images

Others acknowledge that there are restive portions of the clergy and black political leadership, but decline to pin the blame on Mr. de Blasio. Bishop Gerald G. Seabrooks, who leads several large congregations in the city, said he was confident the mayor was moving “in the right direction” on policing and encouraged Mr. de Blasio to get out in the community more.

“I would do regular town hall meetings,” said Mr. Seabrooks, who met recently with City Hall officials and has requested a meeting with the mayor. “I think people would welcome that, and it doesn’t give them the opportunity to say the process is too slow.”

Policing issues are clearly the greatest source of friction, though Mr. de Blasio and his advisers have argued that the mayor has made transformational changes to policing. Phil Walzak, a senior adviser to the mayor, cited statistics showing that during the mayor’s first year in office, there have been sharp drops in stop-and-frisk encounters and in the number of complaints filed with the Civilian Complaint Review Board.

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Mayoral advisers argue that Mr. de Blasio continues to move as quickly as practically possible on law enforcement concerns. The city has not taken administrative action against Daniel Pantaleo, the officer in the Garner case whom a Staten Island grand jury declined to indict, but Mr. Walzak said that Loretta E. Lynch, the United States attorney general, requested that the city wait until a Justice Department inquiry can be completed.

Mr. Walzak said the mayor had a record of enacting “important reforms to bring the police and community closer together while keeping crime at historic lows.” He said Mr. de Blasio met last month with Mr. Butts and is scheduled to meet this week with city leaders of the N.A.A.C.P.

“Some of those initiatives include the dramatic decrease in stop-and-frisk, as well as fundamental change in the marijuana arrest policy, as well as bail reform,” Mr. Walzak said of the mayor’s record. “Those are all important changes that bring police and the community closer together.”

Yet with a national debate on police tactics raging, there is at least a fear among New York activists, and some lawmakers, that Mr. de Blasio has grown overly cautious.

Tamika Mallory, a co-chairwoman of Justice League NYC, a police reform advocacy group, said Mr. de Blasio’s tenor changed after his clash last winter with police union leaders, who encouraged protests against the mayor after two officers were killed by a mentally troubled gunman, who had indicated on social media that he was moved by the Garner chokehold case.

“The police turned their backs on him and all of the sudden he is beginning to concede,” Ms. Mallory said. “Is it already to the point that we have to turn our backs on the mayor?”

City Councilman Jumaane D. Williams, a police reform advocate who said he had a positive working relationship with the mayor, said there was nearly “universal” agreement that changes to law enforcement had been slow in coming. “As time passes on and things are moving at a pace slower than people wanted, I think everyone is going to begin pushing a little bit more,” Mr. Williams, a Brooklyn Democrat, said.

Even some black leaders who have been critical of the mayor at times say they remain supportive of Mr. de Blasio in general. Bertha Lewis, a longtime de Blasio ally whose advocacy group, the Black Institute, has criticized the mayor for not giving enough contracts to businesses owned by women and minorities, attributed most community leaders’ complaints to a communications problem.

“At this point, 18 months in, I think it has more to do with a lack of interaction, communication and inclusion more than anything else,” she said.

A version of this article appears in print on May 18, 2015, on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Black Leaders Showing Signs of Frustration With de Blasio. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe